Word: coupes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Relaxing on the awning deck in shorts, the Strong Man was in his best bluff humor. Once again he was undisputed dictator of Cuba. In an almost bloodless coup last month, the tough ex-sergeant had toppled President Carlos Prío. Now Prío was in Miami exile; his powerful labor movement had knuckled under to the new ruler; Congress was suspended (on full pay), and Batista was dictator and "Provisional President" under a brand-new set of "statutes" he himself had proclaimed to the Cuban people. Nobody seemed perturbed by the coup, and throngs of other Cubans...
...rumbas and mambos. Its socialites dine off gold plate, and its sumptuous casinos are snowed under by the pesos of sugar-rich playboys. The "dance of the millions" that Cuba knew in its brief post-World War I sugar boom is going again full blast. Batista brought off his coup at the top of Cuba's market...
Pork & Passports. Why was there practically no opposition when Batista pulled his coup? The basic answer is that seven years of riotously rotten government had left the average Cuban too cynical about democracy to fight in its behalf. When Grau San Martin was swept into office in 1944 on a wave of popular demand for housecleaning, he said: "There is nothing wrong with Cuba that an honest administration can't cure." Then the scholarly professor and his successor proceeded to give the island, which has seen plenty of corruption in its time, the most graft-and gangster-ridden government...
There was at least an even chance that an honest man would have won the June 1 election. The result of Batista's coup is that the cynical old political practices will go on as before. Batista gave the lottery to the same lieutenant who handled it for him under his earlier dictatorship; he placed the customs, a traditional source of political enrichment, in army hands. In scrupulous conformity with the existing code, he left Prío's personal properties untouched-just as Prío had never laid a hand...
...Wanted? Because revolutions often become epidemic, some fear that the Batista coup and last week's Bolivian revolt may be followed by explosions elsewhere, possibly in Ecuador or Colombia. But nobody in Latin America, except the Communists and the neo-fascist fringe, professes to want any other kind of government except democracy. In the long run, as hunger and ignorance are dealt with, democracy may yet win in Latin America, though it is likely to be quite different from the U.S. variety...